Rip a new site apart please

mneylon

New forum for chatting about films, dvds etc.:

http://www.movieforums.eu/

py2006

Well I am not sure if you are looking for opinions on the sites design or what? Afterall its just a forum!

However, I do like the skin you used and the logo!

tomED

Nice skin - but yeah just another forum.... how many you got now michele?

nikimere

Looks well, but, for a forum i don't think light text on a dark background is a good idea. It's quite tiring on the eye when you have to read a lot of text.
There is a reason papers are traditionally printed on white paper Other than that it looks good. I like the logo.

mneylon

tomED wrote:

Nice skin - but yeah just another forum.... how many you got now michele?

I manage about a half dozen of them, though two of those are for the company

tomED

I'm only slaggin ye!!!

mneylon

tomED wrote:

I'm only slaggin ye!!!

You hurt my feelings

randombar

Really like the colours! Just wondering if the Forum column is a bit wide?

tom-thebox

its a lovely skin, the logo is pretty neat too

philologos

That skin looks familiar. I've seen it before anyway.

subway

what kind of feedback are you looking for or is this just an ad?

Oriel

It's just a vbulletin forum with a skin...

CuLT

Perhaps we should be directing our critique towards VBStyles.com?

mneylon

GaryCocs wrote:

Really like the colours! Just wondering if the Forum column is a bit wide?

It's a fluid layout, so it should resize according to your screen size. Of course it might not, so the CSS may need tweaking

Karoma

1t m4k3s m3 th1nk 0f c3rt41n 0+h3r s1t3s... gu3$$ wh1ch!
Usability... Grey on grey? No real contrast. The text boxes can be too wide on wider screens... Can all discourage reading. Icons too small and emoticons don't overlay nicely at all. Pity us blind bastards. And, after all, it is just a vB forum with a skin - there's nothing more important than readability (and well, nothing more to say about the "site".)

philologos

I'm starting to get suspicious of why the OP posted this. For advertising or for comments about a style that was released by VBStyles. The former seems more likely.

forbairt

Jakkass wrote:

I'm starting to get suspicious of why the OP posted this. For advertising or for comments about a style that was released by VBStyles. The former seems more likely.

I'd have to say ... Yes / No ...

In this instance he's a webmaster ... asking for comments on his new site ... I've seen many other people on here request comments / criticism on their sites ... (that I've felt were simple template sites) so far he's heard a number of people saying they aren't too keen on the black background as the contrast black background .. white text makes it hard to read ... (I'm also a member of that board so possibley biased) ... also he's just gotten someone to design a logo and has posted in various other places asking for criticism / suggestions ...

I think the majority of people posting in here post their site for feedback ... and to try and attract some business / attention (hence I'll agree that it doesn't hurt business so to speak)

OSCommerce sites ... are pretty much a one click install ... and you can install a template quite easily over them .. yet people ask for feedback on them .. or for any of the Joomla sites that they bung a template on and change the logo for ...


Anyways ... I quite like the look of the site ... it feels good as opposed to another of your sites I really don't like the look / feel of ...

I run boards with the Cloud skin .. so I quite like white on black background ...

The Menu system .. seems to do weird things with firefox 2.0.0.6 at times ... it causes the menu items to appear under each other ...

Also the Latest post Date / Time appears in black against a black background ...

Haven't tested it against IE

philologos

I do like that skin though. I suppose some people like it for the contrast the while against the black, and the green against the black etc. Whoever did that on VBStyles deserves some major kudos. Theres been a lot of skins for PHPBB 3 that I've liked as well.

forbairt

Jakkass wrote:

I do like that skin though. I suppose some people like it for the contrast the while against the black, and the green against the black etc. Whoever did that on VBStyles deserves some major kudos. Theres been a lot of skins for PHPBB 3 that I've liked as well.

The default PHPBB 3 skin is quite cool as well

philologos

yeah the one that's currently on the official site is sweet. The thing is you could use it as part of another template. In a div or as part of a table. And of course with a PHP forum the opportunity for making a CMS with it is always there too.

mneylon

The feedback on the contrasts are valuable and hopefully can be addressed by tweaking the template's CSS.

The latest thread colours does look a bit off - hopefully I'll have time over the weekend to dig into it

I haven't been able to replicate the menu issues on Firefox (which is the only browser I use)
Do you have any plugins installed that could be causing this?

mneylon

Does anyone know of a plugin / extension for vbulletin that would allow people to rate films? There's a "rate this thread" function, but that doesn't really do the job

edanto

As far as content goes - is there a niche for another film discussion board? I have the impression that there are plenty already, and don't really see anything different about this one.

Style and layout, I looked around a bit and it the nav seems fairly standard and works well, but the colours are terrible. Light text on dark background is a bit of a souffle, tough to get right, but sometimes exquisite. I don't think you've cracked it yet, I found it hard on the eyes. Here an example of a site that is light on dark and very easy on the eyes http://daringfireball.net/

CuLT

edanto wrote:

Here an example of a site that is light on dark and very easy on the eyes http://daringfireball.net/

Easy on the eyes? Yes. But also brutally unimaginitive.

forbairt

blacknight wrote:

Do you have any plugins installed that could be causing this?

Firebug could be causing the problem ... (I do get some memory leaks with firefox from time to time)

philologos

CuLT wrote:

Easy on the eyes? Yes. But also brutally unimaginitive.

But it's intended to be minimalist. That works at times.

edanto

CuLT wrote:

Easy on the eyes? Yes. But also brutally unimaginitive.

I'm not applauding the content/layout/other parts of the site, just the colour scheme as being easy to read.

forbairt

edanto wrote:

I'm not applauding the content/layout/other parts of the site, just the colour scheme as being easy to read. k?

I have to disagree actually ... I find it makes my vision start to blur and I lose focus ... not attacking the site ... didn't read anything there ... just tried looking at the content for a bit .. and it didn't work for me ...

mneylon

forbairt wrote:

Firebug could be causing the problem ... (I do get some memory leaks with firefox from time to time)

Would you mind disabling it and browsing the site just to see please?

I know I was having some very "interesting" issues with a lot of sites due to a couple of the FF plugins I had enabled on one of my PCs...

forbairt

blacknight wrote:

Would you mind disabling it and browsing the site just to see please?

I know I was having some very "interesting" issues with a lot of sites due to a couple of the FF plugins I had enabled on one of my PCs...

It doesn't happen that often ... so I'm guessing its just my version / plugins / combo ...

I've disabled a few of the plugins ... I'm using .. firebug was the one that sprang to mind as its monitoring the code on the page ...

I get various weird issues with Firefox and memory from time to time ... it starts to get very big in size ... 350+ mbs .. and starts to chug a bit ... I've put it down to poor javascript on sites before .. but have never really investigated properly ..

DemonOfTheFall

Looks like it could be an Xbox forum with the contrast turned down a notch.

macroman

Although I do like the GreenFox theme (it tends to looks better in Fixed than Fluid), I think that it's a bit too dark, and that maybe something a bit lighter would suit a bit better - just my opinion though.

mneylon

macroman wrote:

Although I do like the GreenFox theme (it tends to looks better in Fixed than Fluid), I think that it's a bit too dark, and that maybe something a bit lighter would suit a bit better - just my opinion though.

Can you recommend any alternatives?